“I only think they ask you those questions if you’re boring, Stephen.” I was having coffee with Oliver, who hosts The Earful Tower. “I honestly think that people who give tight-lipped answers don’t give the interviewers anywhere to go, so they have to keep going back to the standard list of questions.”

It was two days before my interview and I appreciated my friend’s reframing of the issue and accepted it, to an extent. I had read about by-the-book interviewers who really didn’t care about who you were but were just running through a fairly difficult list of questions. As I mentioned in my previous article, I had been preparing for the interview in a very casual way for years, cataloguing almost all the answers in the Applying for French Nationality Facebook group into a giant Apple Note. I had taken the questions that appeared every single time and put them first in my preparation notebook. I then created a second section with all of the weird/less frequently asked questions so that at least I would have some preparation on those in case I got them.

I studied everything and had a friend mock-interview me three consecutive nights prior to the interview, correcting any factual errors as well as any errors in expression or grammar. By the time I showed up for my interview, I felt like I had done everything I could have to prepare.

The experience was unlike what I had experienced before in obtaining or renewing a Carte de Sejour. Firstly, I didn’t have to make the appointment, the French made it. Secondly, I didn’t have to stand in a line at Cité for two hours with a large number of people just to get in for an appointment which may then be delayed another hour or two. The sign outside the small building on rue des Ursins stated that we should not expect to show up more than 30 minutes early for our appointment. I had arrived about 20 minutes early and the man at the front asked for my convocation and ID. He then sent me up to the third floor where about half a dozen people were quietly, pensively, sitting.

I had worn a suit and tie that day, hoping to make a good first impression, and before I started reviewing my notebook one last time, I glanced around the room, wondering at all the stories and what had brought us all here, in common, to this day and moment.

My slot was at 09h15 and when it came to be 09h27 I checked with a woman who has administering an exit survey and she told me not to worry, that my name would be called. Sure enough, about ten minutes later it was.

My interviewer apologized for being late and offered me a seat in front of her desk. While there were many such desks in the room (I estimate maybe a dozen) they were arranged in such a way (and the conversations were conducted in such a tone) that there was still a fair amount of confidentiality.

I flipped my notebook to a blank page so I could take note of what I was being asked for. She didn’t seem to object. Then we got started.

Housekeeping

The first part of the interview went like almost any bureaucratic procedure in France: verification of identity. I was asked for my passport, birth certificate, and CDS. They had all of this already via my dossier, but she was probably obligated to handle the genuine documents. I saw her compare the information in her hands to the scans I could see on her computer screen. For each document this ran maybe 60 seconds at the most. She handed each back to me.

She asked if my situation had changed since I applied (it had not) and whether my income was mostly derived in France or outside France (the correct answer here is “in France”) and whether I belonged to any associations (I shared one that I had participated in for years).

I was asked if I had ever been married or PACSed and if I had any children (no to all).

The Basics

Here is a list of the questions that I was asked that I had known I would be asked:

• What is the devise of the French Republic? This refers to the motto of “liberte, egalite, and fraternite.” I gave definitions for each. She asked me to articulate further on fraternite and I answered that included solidarity with all citizens on their rights and duties and equal treatment under the law.
• What are some of those rights? I answered: right to vote, right to access to public employment, and right to equal treatment under the law.
• What is the national holiday? In this context, this is a reference to the 14th of July. I explained what happened that day and what the Bastille was prior to its being stormed.
• What other symbols of the country are there? I answered the constitution (dating from 1958), the flag (explained which colors corresponded to what), and the figure of Marianne (who is featured in each mairie via a bust and on the postal stamps).
• Name some of the presidents of the Fifth Republic. I was still nervous at this point and named all of them in chronological order. I laughed and apologized, saying that I was nervous. She hand-waved it away, urging me to be at my ease.
• Name some important figures in the life of France. I named Clovis, Henry IV, Louis XVI, Marie Curie, and Charles de Gaulle, with reasons why each were important. I could have gone on, but I kept looking for her to indicate my answer was sufficient and when I saw that I stopped.
• How is the legislative body comprised? I told her that there were 577 deputies and 348 senators. I could have discussed their term lengths and might have named where they met also (I had studied it, after all), but she didn’t ask for more so I didn’t offer more.
• What about laicite? This is the institutional religious indifference enshrined in French law. I explained the reasons given for its promulgation and various dates that were important in relation to it (1905, 2004, 2010). She followed by asking me about why the policy exists and I shared that one reason it might exist is because of the diversity of cultures and religions in the country, but did not offer my own opinion on the policy. Remember that this is a key piece of advice I always share: do not give the French more than they ask for, in documents or in verbal answers. It is not necessarily helpful.
• Do you travel in France? Where? I shared some of my favorite places, les Calanques in Marseille, the hortillonages of Amiens, Mont-Saint-Michel, and the battlefields in Normandy. I also shared why each mattered to me.
• How often do you visit the United States? Almost every summer, I said, mostly because my nieces and nephews are out of school then and it’s easier for me to spend time with them that way. But not outside of that annual visit.
• Why do you want to be French? As I often tell TAIP clients, there is one single item on which almost every dossier crucially turns. The answer to this question is the most crucial in your interview. And of course, it’s a highly personal, specialized answer. There’s not a template for it. For me, I shared that I had felt at home in France since my earliest days there, and as someone born in one country and raised in another, choosing a third country offered an opportunity to construct a coherent worldview that harmonized with the other influences in your life. Prominent in my identification with the French was the notion of “working to live” rather than “living to work” (prevalent in the US) and my love of the history, culture, and people of the country. “I feel French,” I told her, “so I am asking to become so officially.”

The Misses

Here are questions I expected but did not get:

• Tell me about your entourage. They are looking here for the types of friends you have, i.e. are you mostly surrounded by expats or do you actually have French friends.
• What are your links to France? Apart from your friends and work situation, this could further riff on what you like to do or where you have traveled and plan to travel to.
• Name some hobbies. These days I mostly read, and was prepared to discuss what I had been reading about lately.
• Name some of the French holdings overseas. These are the DROM/COM and I was so ready to talk about all of this but wasn’t asked.
• What are key dates relating to France and the European Union? The 1951 Treaty of Paris and the 1958 Treaty of Rome, and if you want to get political you could talk about the Lisbon treaty that the French rejected but got forced to accept anyway. 🙂
• Name some French regions/departments. I had fun all week drawing maps of France and wanted to name all 13 regions just for fun. Alas! I was also prepared to name every department in Ile-de-France, and the corresponding two-digit number.
• Name some rivers or mountain ranges. Again, I was ready to nail this, but she didn’t ask.
• What happens if the President dies? The President of the Senat can be asked to take over temporarily.
• What were the main effects of the French Revolution? Again, I would have offered what had been outlined in the citizenship booklet, not my own thoughts or opinions.

The Extras

Here are questions I was asked but I knew were not necessarily part of the “core” that everyone is asked:

• Do you travel in Europe? Where? I didn’t want to get into an extended discussion about all the places I had been to in Europe, so I just picked England, the Netherlands, and Hungary, noting that I had friends in those places that I enjoyed seeing (again, no more information than is being asked).
• Who is the Prime Minister? I had actually studied a list of a dozen or so ministers, somewhat scared by someone who had recently shared that she was asked to name at least six. Thankfully, I only had to answer Michel Barnier for this question, which was correct at the time. I don’t know who his replacement is.

The Whoa!

Here are questions I did not expect but got:

• What do you think about the equality of men and women? I initially laughed at this question because I had obviously missed this in my prep somewhere. I came to find out later it was part of a rotating group of questions to see your personal opinion on questions related to sexism, racism, and homosexual civil rights. I got the “sexism” question. I contextualized my laughter by answering that the countries I had been raised in (Singapore and the US) accepted the equality of men and women without question but that I could understand that the answer to this question may not be as obvious in other parts of the world.
• What do you think of the right to express criticism or even mocking of leadership or religion? I level-set by asking if she was referring to magazines like Charlie Hebdo, and she nodded. I could have spoken about this for a long time, but as I keep saying, I focused on a concise expression rather than a discursive entree into a long discussion: I believe that it is important to be able to criticize, and to some extent, even mock, our leaders and institutions and key figures in order to have a healthy society.

The Well, Maybe…

Here are questions I did not expect but studied a tiny bit because at least one person had mentioned he/she had been asked:

• Name some of your favorite French sayings. I planned to discuss a number of the agricultural and farming idioms, starting with “mêle-toi de tes oignons.” I’ve always loved the references to nature in the French language.
• Name some plays by Moliere. I’ve never read any Moliere, actually, but I had written down three plays I might stutter out if asked (and I have a resolution now to read La Misanthrope in the new year). I had hoped I might deflect into some general questions about French authors, directors, or actors, and I had a pocketful of those ready to go, with a special mention of The Diary of a Country Priest, not only a fine novel by Georges Bernanos, but a thoughtful film by Robert Bresson.
• Who is the mayor of your arrondissement? Emmanuelle Pierre-Marie governs the 12th.
• What do you like about your arrondissement? I was prepared with cafes, places to stroll, even the biography of the man who was the namesake of the roundabout my apartment is close to.
• Who wrote the Marseillaise and when? Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, in 1792. Would you believe that one of my friends was asked to sing this during her interview?

I grabbed a celebratory dinner with friends over the weekend at an Uzbek restaurant in Paris and realized almost all of them had obtained French nationality either by decree or by marriage. One of the key talking points that was shared with my Swedish friend Karin, who was currently going through the “by marriage” route was that the French cannot legally refuse nationality to someone who they believe is in a genuine marriage, hence the dossier is really focused on establishing the fact of the marriage. They may ask some of the questions I was asked above for my “decree” route, but they have no substantial bearing on the decision. The spouses are interviewed separately to make sure the “stories match” about how they met, each other’s characteristics, etc.

We were finally at the end of the interview, it felt like, but it had flown by. She asked if I had received my updated tax document for 2023. I told her I had and she asked me to log in and email it to her right then and I did and she downloaded it and added it to my dossier.

She then gave me a document to sign which was a list of the rights and duties of a French citizen. The document begins by reminding you that obtaining citizenship is not just an administrative function, but will deeply affect you and your descendants. Weighty enough, indeed. She told me to take my time reading it and when I was ready, I needed to sign it. It’s not long (you can read it here) and I speed-skimmed it, as almost all of it was matter I had already studied to prepare for the interview. I signed and dated it, she scanned it into my dossier, and handed the original back to me (we really are in a new paperless era!).

She then told me it could take some time for a decision and that I would be notified by email as I had been all throughout the process. She then thanked me and walked me out, and I spent a couple minutes filling out a voluntary exit survey.

In all it took probably 40 minutes of my time. My interviewer was not typing in my answer to every question and reading it back to me (what I was expecting based on reports from previous interviews) but was rather mentally pulling out questions and would, I expected, write up a report of her impressions as part of her decision to give me a favorable or unfavorable mark.

As with so much in life, all you can do is speak about your own impression. If you think you did well on an exam, most times you will have, though sometimes circumstances can work against you. So too here, if I had to bet my entire nationality dossier on this interview, I would say I made a very good case, but there may be other parts of my application that they will question. In retrospect, perhaps I had “over prepared” but the best preparation for a nationality interview is living a fully integrated (which includes speaking French every day) life in France. Everything else will flow from that experience.

So if I’m to be denied it will most likely happen before the beginning of February. If no word comes before then, I have a very strong chance of being approved. So, no news is good news in this case.

Here’s what happened next.

Photo is of the door which leads to the waiting room for your interview.

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The first article on my citizenship journey came out in April. In it, I said, “I expect to receive communication from the prefecture within 2-3 months, and if all is satisfactory with my dossier, an interview date 2-3 months beyond that.”

I was generally right. The interview date was actually for about 7 months from that submission in April, but it was only for a few weeks after I got the all-clear on my dossier.

To be fair, after a decade with the French, I feel like I know their bureaucratic rhythms, even the new speedy post-Covid ones.

On October 21st a message appeared in my account asking for more documentation:

Attention merci de ne pas répondre à ce message, veuillez uniquement scanner en un seul document: Les bilans comptables annuels des années 2021, 2022 et 2023.

My first thought was, “Oh no, do the French want to audit my business?” But after I pondered it a bit longer, I realized it was the same thing I so often tell TAIP clients: the French are following a checklist, so give them everything they want on the checklist.

My French business accountant was kind enough to combine all three requested tax years into a single PDF, as the message demanded, and I submitted it the very next day, the 22nd.

Two days later, on the 24th, I received two messages, one right after the other.

The first one was a “Récépissé de Completude de Dossier de Demande de Naturalisation.” This was distinct from the original “Confirmation de Dépot” that I alluded to in the last article. The distinction seems to be that the first step is simply an acknowledgment that you have submitted the paperwork that was asked for. In contrast, the Récépissé implied, at least to me, that the entire dossier had been checked at least once, probably twice, by competent authorities and was found to have no serious holes (apart from the paperwork which they requested and I gave). Here’s some of the text:

RÉCÉPISSÉ DE COMPLÉTUDE DE DOSSIER DE DEMANDE DE NATURALISATION

(décret n° 93-1362 du 30 décembre 1993 – article 37)

Monsieur HEINER STEPHEN (my middle name) né à SINGAPOUR (SINGAPOUR) le (my date of birth) demeurant au (my address) 75012 Paris a déposé le 08/02/2024 à la Prefecture de Police un dossier n° (my dossier number) de demande de naturalisation, après l’avoir examinée, et constaté son caractère complet, la Prefecture de Police va procéder à son instruction.

In times past, and with less efficient processes, there may have been a lag between this Récépissé and my Convocation for my interview. In this case, there was no lag whatsoever. The very next message included:

CONVOCATION

ENTRETIEN D’ASSIMILATION

Monsieur HEINER STEPHEN (my middle name), vous avez déposé une demande de naturalisation n° (my dossier number) dans mon service.

Afin de pouvoir procéder à l’entretien réglementaire nécessaire à l’instruction de votre dossier, je vous serais obligé de vous présenter :

Le (a date in November) à 09:15 précises

Lieu : Préfecture de police – Délégation à l’immigration – Pôle de l’accès à la nationalité – 11 rue des Ursins 75004 Paris

Afin de poursuivre l’instruction de votre dossier, je vous prie d’apporter le jour de votre convocation l’ensemble des pièces d’état civil déposées lors de votre demande, en version originale.

That date was less than a month from the email I received, so my pre-planned studies went into high gear.

Now, let’s be clear, by “high gear” I don’t mean eight-hour study days. But I did set aside at least one hour a day every day until the interview to review what I wanted to know cold, which included, among other things:

• History of the 5th Republic (who was the 3rd President?)
• General French Geography (where is the Rhone River valley?)
• The mechanics of government (who is elected for how long and what kind of power does that person have?)
• Trivia (French authors and musicians, French actors and actresses, when was the death penalty abolished, etc.)

I had been generically familiar with these things but having combed the Internet for years in preparation (whenever anyone would publish the interview questions he/she was asked I saved them to an ever-growing Apple Note) I didn’t want to get caught out on something basic.

I’ve also added some B2 study modules to flex some additional tenses and vocabulary in the interview.

But let’s be clear here, the interview is not really about a sort of French Trivial Pursuit contest and getting every question “right” (more than one naturalized friend has told me he/she got at least one question “wrong” in the interview). At its heart, it is an “entretien d’assimilation,” an interview about how well I had integrated into France. The interview is to be conducted entirely in French, which also implies being able to use various tenses to talk about your past life, your present life, and your hopes for the future.

Things interviewers like to hear:

• That you have French friends
• That you have connections in France, whether that’s through joining associations or volunteer work
• That you’ve traveled in France and have learned some things through that travel
• That you accept French values and have incorporated them into your life
• That you’re not a jerk

I half-kid on that last point, only to say that in recent times I think the authorities have taken to combing your social media profiles, so if you are at all critical of France and her government, that might be held against you, even if “liberté” is touted as a “republican value” that is treasured by the state (and hence, should be treasured by you). But it is reasonable for the French, or any nation, to put a barrier up against naturalizing people who openly criticize the country when they are still only residents, even long-term residents. Such privileges are reserved for citizens, at least one would hope.

From my research I’ve found that interviews have lasted as short as 15 minutes and have gone as long as 30 minutes.

Something Jean Taquet has always stressed to me over the years and that I’ve taken to heart is the importance of having a cover letter to present that tells your interviewer why you want to become French. The current digital process doesn’t really give a space for this (i.e. a place to upload “any other documentation you might find helpful,” something that Americans consider normal but the French would consider abhorrent, as it doesn’t fit on a checklist), though Jean told me later I should have simply included it as part of the PDF of another document. In any case, I will have a one-page version of said cover letter ready, along with letters of recommendation from two friends, to present in person at my interview. If the interviewer takes the time to scan it briefly, the content of the interview may go along the outlines of the points I’ve made in the cover letter rather than the standard questions that all the interviewers can draw from.

Doli, who you’ve seen wax lyrical on bilingualism on this site, told me that her interview was almost entirely on bilingualism, as the interviewer was intrigued with her course of study and Doli basically spoke for 30-45 minutes straight before the interviewer finally wrapped things up. Doli faced no questions on presidents or mountains or where the Senate meets (the Luxembourg Palace, in case you’re wondering), reinforcing the points I made above: the interview is less about reciting facts and more about explicating the case you are making in your dossier: I feel French (for these reasons) and let me tell you (in French) all about it while you ask me (in French) follow-up questions.

I can’t wait to tell you about how it went. You’ll hear in the next article.

The image is a screenshot from my dashboard on the Etrangers en France site, showing my current progress towards a decision on nationality.

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